Unfortunately, the truck was a bit too large. He wasn’t able to maneuver his truck into the alley down the block and behind my house to get to my garage, where I had planned to store the books.

So, he unloaded both pallets onto the sidewalk in front of my house. Since my wife had the car that day, I didn’t even have a trunk to load the boxes into to drive them around the block to my garage.

So… I set about moving 1,370 pounds of books — one 30-pound box at a time into my house and then down to my basement — where I have a fruit cellar with some very sturdy shelves perfect for the boxes.

I didn’t want to have all the boxes in the living room at the same time, so I carried eight boxes into the house and then carted them down to the basement. Then I would cart eight more boxes in. And then eight more would go downstairs.

That’s ten stairs up to my front door, and then a dozen stairs down to the basement.

It took me about an hour to get all the books into the house and then another hour to get the shelves cleaned off and the boxes stacked neatly inside.

But the important thing is that they’re here.

And they look awesome. I’m so excited to get these out to you guys. And I’ll definitely have a supply on hand in Seattle for Emerald City Comic Con.

I will be packaging orders this weekend, and doing Artist Edition sketches in the evenings. I’ll be sure to post my progress here and in my Twitter feed.

Meanwhile, thank you to the many people who preordered their books. I wouldn’t have been able to pay for that print run otherwise. I’m very much overwhelmed by the response.

If you haven’tordered yours yet, take another look at the photos of the fruit cellar above. I’m planning a Phables book, I should print about 500 copies of Vol. 1, and I’ll likely have Vol. 4 before the end of the year.